I don't know if it is a Notes issue or not, but pasting sections of Excel sheets as a bitmap is totally useless. The default Paste for this should be RTF/HTML which is only accessible via Paste Special

Sounds nice. You can also use "Copy plain text" firefox add-on, just for copying from web contents.
{ Link }

As many people tend to copy/paste texts through shortcuts it would also be acceptable just to use an other shortcut for "Paste as plain text". (ex. Shift-Ctrl-V)
Maybe this would be a better solution then expanding the right-click menu ?

Ad-Hoc right click menu is a good idea, I used to teach Excel users how to learn Excel in 1 second: right click everything. Using the Menu bar takes too much time to learn all options, but of course it's also good to have for reference.

I understand the reasoning but I can't think of any other programs that have Paste Special as a right click option. By its nature it's a non-standard action and the right click menu is already cluttered enough. But I'm obviously outvoted on this one :-)

Definitely want paste special on the right mouse, I'd also support copy as plain text since I'm forever "bouncing" things across notepad to convert them.

We could take steps to prevent the menu from expanding (see below);

Cut
Copy
Copy Special >
Paste
Paste Special >

Where copy and paste special had submenus...

eg:


Cut
Copy
Copy Special > As Plain Text
As Document Link
As Notes URL Link
Paste
Paste Special > As RTF
More...

(More...) would bring up the dialog box.

If you install AutoHotKey (www.autohotkey.com) you can map e.g. CTRL + SHIFT + v to Paste Plain - see { Link }

It's probably a poweruser thing. Perhaps it should only be visible on the right-click menu if 'Advanced Menus' is turned on?
That said, it gets my vote either way (sorry Matt)

There is a danger that having too many mouse right click options makes the interface even more confusing for those that struggle with too many choices. I beleive there was a lot of applause when IBM first announced with Notes 8 that you could deactivate all the standard right mouse click actions....

This idea is pure gospel!

Copying from anything else (Firefox, IE, Excel, etc.) often times looks like total S**T when pasted into Rich Text.

Recently, I stumbled onto ALT-E-S-T keystrokes to produce the popup dialogue for paste special (found on one of the more prominent Domino bloggers posts), but even that is a little hard to key in.

I like this idea. A quick way to paste plain text would be ideal. As an interim measure, I have put the paste special button on my editing toolbar; this brings up the paste special dialog.

This is the solution I use

{ Link }

WindowsKey-V is now a plain text paste into any app.

I agree. At least give us a keyboard shortcut for paste special.

It would certainly prevent the long wait when you copy-paste from a web page into Notes.

Keyboard shortcut for paste special also need

I would like to see an option added to the preferences to make this stick. Then I can just use ctrl+v to paste what I want.

yes. this.

with keyboard shortcut, and right-click menu.

also, the ability to change the default paste option - so Excel would paste as rich text by default, something copied from IE would paste as plain text, etc. Excel bitmaps are causing me to go prematurely bald from all the hair pulling.

or, change the default for everything to plain text and use paste special for any other format.

I would really vote for CTRL + SHIFT + v to Paste Plain text. Pretty the same like in Open Office.